The best part about the "they control the weather" theory is that they are posting an old military patent on social media. What's funny about it is that, American patent law being what it is, even if it was real it would prove nothing. I could file a patent for a working dragon; that doesn't mean I have access to a fucking dragon. It just means I have ownership of any dragons that work like the patent I submitted. A patent is only to show ownership of an idea and nothing more.
The only caveat I would say about this is that it only applies to corpo vtubers like Hololive. Indie vtubers are pretty unhinged and unscripted sometimes.
The only thing you're really getting with the 9 over the 8 is better hardware design. Personally I miss the full visor, but not enough to look over the 9. If hardware doesn't really matter as much to you the 8 is cheaper and will most likely reach feature parity with the 9.
Yeah, the preamble bit is funny, but I felt it was needed because I have... issues that make me insecure about being misunderstood. I tend to over-explain things so I wanted to make sure people knew where I was coming from. I agree that it can be a fun place, and it is especially nice for those with limited means to connect with people. It's not like I'm arguing for the end of all social media platforms, but more that some people need to have limits. When you spend enough time disconnected form people and the reality of living people become an their username and not the person they were. I truly believe social media does more good than bad, but because of the human condition the negative will always outweigh the positive. As my final though, I just believe that there is a difference between making connections, personal or otherwise, and sharing too much of yourself. This may be personal, but I don't even share EVERYTHING with my parents or close friends.
It could be that people backing off social media is why it seems to have gotten worse on some platforms. If all the dissenting voices leave it is easier to believe you are correct. I have also stopped using social media as much since Reddit went to shit. That kind of opened my eyes to how volatile typical social media is. I pretty much only look at social media to see if someone I watch is live, but mostly I'm on Twitch and YouTube just to watch videos. Every time I look at the comments I regret it.
I generally live by the adage that everyone makes their own personal choices for their own reasons so I try not to make fun of people for their choices, or in a few cases genetics. I especially try to avoid making fun of people for something they actually have no choice in such as genetics. I'm a bald man, but when I was a kid I used to make fun of my dad for being bald until he sat me down and explained to me how horrible it was to make fun of a person's genetic situation. In general the rule I try to keep myself to is that I won't joke about it unless the person in question would joke about it as well.
People Overshare Too Much on Social Media
Preamble: I'm doing this because I have some feelings I need to get out of my head for my own mental health, and thusly I am just as guilty of doing what I am condemning in this post. Also, I started writing this before fully thinking it through so if it seems like my post doesn't follow the title exactly that is why.
Pretty much as the title says, I truly believe humanity in general was never meant to know, or let others know, everything that happens in their life good or bad. The reason for this is that it is impossible to explain nuance with just words, you need verbal and/or face to face communication to adequately explain to people situations in your life. Just saying something bad happened to you on the internet doesn't really explain to people how bad it was to people. You know what does let people know how bad of a situation you are in is? Having an emotional breakdown. It's ugly, and terrifying to most people, and it should be because it lets people know you are going through real shit.
People can discount and simplify horrible actions on the internet without adequately experiencing the pain of the victim. They can easily ignore proof, or add what they think is context, but is actually just an excuse to victim blame. It's easy to logically, or illogically in some cases, explain things away without taking into account how the person in the horrible situation felt. This is not me trying to victim blame, but it is me trying to say that victims having easy access to a place to post their trauma to the world without having access to proper care does not really help them in the long run, and can in fact make things worse. Yes, I am aware how loaded "proper care" is, but that is not point of this post. I do think people need to "vent" (I'm simplifying extremely here because victims do not simply "vent") their feelings for their own mental health, I just do not think that doing so to random strangers on the internet who are not interested in listening is in the best interest of anyone who needs to vent. Most people on the internet just want to "solve" the problem. They want the problem to go away. That's about it. I will not go into it here because this post is already long enough, but the other side is that people were also not meant to ingest random people's trauma.
The fact that anyone can insult Dolly Parton immediately shows you their true character.
I mean, I agree that the form factor isn't what matters, that's not what I was saying. When you boot the Steam Deck it actively hides that it is a computer. Let's be real here, all consoles are basically just dumbed down PC's at this point. They have slightly modified AMD chips with AMD GPUs. The only difference is that you can't access the file system. You can on the Steam Deck if you want to, but Valve tries to simplify the experience by presenting it as a console. My argument has nothing to do with the form factor and everything to do with the default presentation.
I just want to say I'm right there with you, and I was trying to make that clear while still explaining my thoughts on why the Steam Deck isn't really a "gaming PC". It could just be the old man in me, but the Deck PRESENTS itself as a console on startup, and to do anything beyond that you have to restart the device. For the general public restarting the device is a huge barrier. Again though, I'm happy the Steam Deck exists and hope that game companies in general will get their head out of their ass and start making more games run natively on Linux. Even with devices that have better performance and look like an upgrade I immediately discount them as an option the moment I see they are running Windows.
My post was not meant to take away your points, and honestly I tend to forget about the Steam workshop because, as you said, I and many other general PC gamers don't mod games that much. I'm not trying to be negative about the Deck, just realistic. Unfortunately for me, my general lack of optimism can be seen as inherently negative. The Steam Deck has already succeeded in its goal as evidenced by the, inferior in my opinion, knockoffs from Asus and Lenovo. The main point I was trying to make is the very fact that if or when people try to install a mod they immediately run into the barrier of having to reboot the device. This isn't a bad thing, but it does tell many people this is not the main way to use the device. Remember that for the general public defaults are the most powerful thing on their device.
For transparency, I have a gaming PC. I have a Steam Deck. I love the Steam Deck to death and would never give it up. For many people, it is the closest thing they will see to PC gaming. I can say without a doubt that the Steam Deck is a PC in the same way a chicken is a wild bird. Can you do 90% of PC related tasks with the Steam Deck? Yes, but with a lot more work, and much more required knowledge. It's not even because of the OS, which is great because it's just Linux based. It's because the Steam Deck does not put necessary parts that average PC users need as forward facing concepts.
The Steam Deck is a console first, and a PC in a pinch and I wouldn't have it any other way. It's the reason I love the device, but also use it less. A good example is modding Elden Ring for Seamless Co-op. You can do it, and it's not HARD per se, but you may have to find files in the OS to make sure Steam knows to open them, and because of how the file tree works in Linux vs Windows it isn't really a simple case of "type the file name in search".
I'm okay with that. I don't want some program I don't control having access to the kernel of my system.
Unfortunately they will probably just ignore it instead of acknowledging it.
What's funny is that I read "police shot attacker 98 times" as they shot one person 98 times. lol
Breaking news, people on the Internet have no concept of nuance.
Yes and no. The theory is that each instance is supposed to be more specialized, kind of like the old BBS that used to be rampant on the internet. If you are moving to an instance just because people disagree with you instead to have more discussion over a specific topic that is not really in line with the purpose of the fediverse.
I mean, they're the biggest instance, of course there is going to be circle jerking, but it also has more dissenting voices to push back against people who are just plain wrong.